12.7.1956.

I read your letter over and over, and still can’t understand much of it. For some reason you’re afraid of speaking plainly. I know about my life, that nothing can make it better, except if I were to land a job and start earning money. Then my relationship at home would improve, I’d be more independent. But even just that sort of improvement wouldn’t satisfy me. I want complete freedom. And I guess – I no longer want anything that there is here for me except the children.

That’s heavy stuff. I have to survive till the very moment when I can actually walk away. Nothing, absolutely nothing can help me. I’ve tried everything. The situation is worse than anyone can imagine. Without support from some sort of institution, I won’t be able to do anything. That is – I can go away myself. But to take the children, I would need some sort of protection.

Once I read in the Australian paper here that some woman had shot her husband. The court excused her. She had 5 adult children, who had grown up there with her, got married, gone away – and she had to do it! She, in self defence, had to shoot someone! Not one of her 5 children were there to save her from her fate. No-one, who could see, understand, know what she was going through. That’s so unbelievable and unimaginably sad. Marriage is the most useless institution on the face of the earth. But there’s nothing more ordinary or insignificant than an unhappy marriage. It’s even – laughable!  
So let’s not talk about it for now.
How are you? Are things still rather chaotic? I just hope you can get back on the rails at all. Take care, take care.

For us, spring is staying hidden. It’s been raining for three days already, and it’s very cold. I baked pīrāgi [bacon pies] and caraway seed buns for the children. At Jāņi they discovered a craving for them. I sometimes like cooking like that. I really like feeding people. Probably a very ordinary female trait. It’s just that pīrāgi and all kinds of pastries are dangerous for me myself – I have to be careful that come spring, my summery dresses aren’t too small. I have the same sort of tendency as Anšl. Eglītis’ Anda (in ‘Man from the Moon’). When I’m cranky, I eat and drink something (coffee) to calm down. But these eating bouts occur too often.
Forgive me. I’m talking drivel.

I’m out of ideas tonight. I’m waiting for the rain to stop… But then I’ll have to pick beans. Those relentless – beans!
But that too will pass
and birds will fall silent
and I won’t see the brown rows
that cover a hill like satin,
and seeds loll and
where the sun pauses
and which sun pauses
when my eye searches there
blinded, bewitched
by a white shirt.
I want to mindlessly flow out, like a river, no restraint, just fly over everything.
Cheers! E. Dz.

8.7.1956.

No letter from you for ages. I say, usually at such times, could it be my fault? Have I been nasty? Maybe I didn’t write to you in time for Jāņi. Maybe something else.
Today I read the beginning of one of your stories in the paper. It looks like it’s going to be very “juicy” and real. I thought – you can really feel the lived life. And humour.

I don’t have humour left any more. I’m living these past months like I’m asleep. No vigour, no hope. I think – I’m also lazy. I spend the evenings playing piano. Compared to other things I could be doing in the evenings – like writing or drawing – playing is being lazy.  Playing is very easy. Quite an automatic, mindless activity, surrendering, sinking into another world, unwinding, relaxing. Also joy and pleasure. And afterwards coming back to reality with the feeling that nothing has been created. Just agitation. When you’ve drawn something, or written something, there’s a feeling of satisfaction, to a greater or lesser degree. Something has been achieved, and there is a moment’s peace. Music doesn’t give that. Not to me. Maybe it’s because I don’t “express” myself to anyone with my playing. I’m listening to someone else’s voice, and getting carried away with that, but I don’t fulfil anything. That’s why playing is never enough for me. I can become weary, I can feel tired of playing, but there’s not a sense of peace, or fulfilment. However, sometimes, even though I do just count it as wasting time, music does clear my mind, gets me ready for work.

Now that I’m playing in the evenings and improving my technique, I wish I could also play in the daytime, but that’s not possible. However, in the day I’ve got 2 girls, two tiny tots, coming for piano lessons.
So I’m muddling along.
But what’s happening with you? Why don’t you write? Is it just happenstance, or are you upset about something?

It is spring here. It rained this morning, now it’s a warm evening. I don’t even want to move to work any more without some sort of change. I haven’t wanted to for a long, long time. But now I’m starting to really feel it physically. I want to sit and just mindlessly feel the hours drifting by. It’s all drifting.

I know, I’ll be disappointed if I stare at the spring sky hoping that someone will take pity on me. Will come, take me in their arms and put me down somewhere else, replant me, like a tomato. No-one will come, no-one will replant. I’ve been waiting too long already. I have to move myself. But I’ve no strength left.

10.7.1956.

I’m in Wyong, and I got your letter. It’s a very strange letter. I’m reading it again and wondering – what are you saying? It must be – to just think about myself. That’s hard for me. But if I have to think only about others right to the end, then I’m starting to get scared, that I won’t last right to the end. I’m starting to feel that quite clearly.

I do have to think about myself. I, myself, have to think about myself. And somehow I am unable to do it. I keep waiting for something from the outside to come and save me. But I also understand, that it’s no use waiting.

In what way could your letters do me harm? There’s no way I’m going to destroy your letters. I’ve just been thinking that I should pack them up and send them somewhere for safekeeping. So far they haven’t been touched, or haven’t been found. If they could be safe with you, I would send them to you, but I don’t trust you. At any moment you could decide that they were not my property and then I wouldn’t be sure any more what might happen to them.
The girls are “on my side”, but what good does that do me? Just moral support.

One day, in front of Inese, I sighed in frustration, that everything that I’m doing and struggling for isn’t bringing me any real results and that I won’t get anywhere and everything will stay just like it is! … She had tears in her eyes.

 “It makes me cry when you say that,” she said. I know that she feels for me. But I’m trying everything and it’s so fruitless, that even the children start to lose faith that they can rely on me. Then I think – I have to try to earn money here somehow, some sort of bean picking (outside the house), some good dollars, and then at Christmas, head for Sydney.

That’s the closest thing to reality that I can think of. But I don’t have faith that I’ll manage it. By myself, it wouldn’t be impossible… But I can’t. Well – we will live on, we will see.  I can’t do any more at the moment – just try to save my strength, save up some pennies and try to glean some practical knowledge. 
I bought some “hit tune” sheet music. Maybe I can find a place where I can be a pianist…
I read you letter again. What kind of “silly” things can you be doing?
For men, usually the two biggest “silly” things are: drinking…as in wine, and women… In moderation!… That’s a  woman’s advice in this matter.

It’s a pity that you didn’t write anything about your silly adventures. I thus am not able to discuss them with you. My midsummer celebrations were boring, you say yours were – silly. Maybe after all yours were better… I was also planning some trifles, but they didn’t turn out. For me to do something silly, I would need at least time to reconsider. That’s quite awful. But that’s how it is. It’s nearly spring. Every day I count, how much is the day getting longer? I don’t know what I am waiting for? Spring! I hope you will manage to do all the writing. I’m also sending you some “lyrical pages” – they really are journal pages, not written for a book.
Yours, E. Dz.

 22.7.1956

Dear Mr Kalniņš,

Thank you very much for your second letter, that is the last one I received (written in a bad mood).
I’m really sorry that I annoyed you by how I understood your previous letter with the advice – “be a woman”. Please forgive me. Now I understand, and I’m happy about it, because I too, was depressed and annoyed by the misunderstanding.

I even wrote you in letter form a meditation about my feelings, which gushed forth, and I didn’t dare send it to you, fearing it would  hurt you. I thought, even though your advice only gave me torment, it was well meant. Now I see that the advice was not of a kind that could torment me. Why I misunderstood you – I’ll try to explain. I laughed at it myself, and you needn’t be sad about it either.

You say to me: “Be a woman”.
That I understand. That resonates in me more strongly than one would imagine.
You must understand that an unhappy wife becomes like a bought woman, even if no-one acknowledges that, (or only rarely). Sooner or later she feels it herself. She is like an object or an animal, not a person, not a woman. To be a woman means to be free, be allowed to choose, because a woman who cannot choose is not a woman. An unhappily married woman can’t do that. And eventually she loses all – memory, illusion about her very existence, belief in her ‘birthright’ and so on. She is pitiable. Yes – for me, your advice – to be a woman – resonates! 

But further you say – “Forget that you are a pure maiden from the shores of the Aiviekste. Break your own mould.” 
That confused me.
To forget my purity.
Going beyond the bounds of my wifely duties, I can only gain my purity – regain it.
Burn it out like with an iron in the fire. If I can find even some illusion and am able to burn from that alone I will stay pure. Burn the dust that has settled over me.

I can’t understand your words – forget your purity. I mulled over it till I felt sick and weary. I thought that your advice was to give even more of my femininity to my everyday life. Give and give and give, to silence the malevolence, ignorance…
I don’t want to even mention how hard it was for me. I fulfilled my obligations, surely. Don’t worry, I won’t turn cynical yet.
That I could have misunderstood you was the result of a slightly distorted conception of “good” and “bad”.
Your advice is good, but to follow it is difficult. 

Firstly, I have no people here.
And if I did manage to find some, it would still not be possible for me to live. My every step is watched over. On rare occasions can I manage to get away for a couple of hours to go shopping, or to the dentist. I have to give an account for every quarter hour. If the bus is late and I am half an hour late, I find the door locked, the house empty – I’m observed from the bush by the roadside…where have I gone, where have I been.

Further – if I broke away from all that, I must needs be like a rabbit in the forest, lest I get caught, because then I would lose the children.
And further still – I cannot take anything lightly or flippantly. I cannot lock up my heart. I would collapse and be irredeemably lost.
And even if I managed that, (how divine that would be…)
I would not be able to come back! I would lose my purity by coming back, but I would have to come back.
I am not quite ready to lead a double life.
Don’t these pages scare you?
Do you understand me?
It’s not just theory, I’ve felt it all, and agonised.
Even so I would accept many things If only I could find a way to have more freedom to choose my own path.
Well now, is it so hard to understand women? Maybe they are a little different to men. Maybe.

I’m so sad that I hurt you with my obtuseness. When I read your last letter, I clearly felt – you were in a terribly bad mood, that you were quite “cranky’. In the next sentence you admitted it. So – I understand you a little. 

But about yourself, you write sparsely. And what you call blunders – as far as I can deduce are – women. What else could they be? But I – being a woman, was and am, a bit offended by your calling women sillinesses and blunders. I hardly like to admit it, but in relation to men, I never use such words (if I’m honest with myself). Of course this may be a different situation.
I would say – thoughtlessness. Mistakes and stupidity are unacceptable, no?
Thoughtless is merely without thought, but not everything on earth needs thought.
I have been drinking coffee and in actual fact I shouldn’t send this letter. But I will.

On Saturday we had guests. For the first time an Australian family had been invited to dinner. I prepared Latvian food. Now we can expect to have dinner at their place. That’s better than being permanently alone, but – it will take even more time and there won’t be much benefit, but even small things must be given their due. The giving doesn’t stop.

23.7.1956.

I’m planting potatoes and again – beans. In the morning it was lovely, mild weather. Now in the afternoon it’s clouding over. Maybe it will rain. Still, sunny days are better.

Your story about the crematorium is impressive. Yes, so too those who want to get into this world wait in queues. I saw that in hospital. And they lie like little worms in their crystallises and graft themselves on to life.

One of my letters that will have arrived there could be misunderstood by you. Maybe this one isn’t so comprehensible either, as it should be. But please, don’t get upset about it. That you can’t tell another live human being anything are hugely arrogant words, because that’s not at all true. For more than two years you letters have helped me keep my head above water and I am – certainly unbelievably weighted down. So, your words have a lot of power. What they say about you – who can really say? You seem to me very very wise and nice and good, whose presence is calming and gives one courage for “battle” – isn’t it enough that your letters say so much?
Your presentation on the rejection of the nobility interests me very much. Won’t you put it in the paper?

You can’t send the registered letters here to my house, that I know – the people here at the post office  are too simple-minded, even giving letters to neighbours to deliver. How it is with the P.O. Box – I don’t know. I think you can send them there. But why do you want to send them by registered mail. I receive letters without any disturbance now, especially if the name is not mentioned, just the box number, the way you write it. 
Yours E.Dz.

7.8.1956.

In the margin of your letter there is a note which is the only indication that you don’t feel well. Because if you can’t feel good when nobody bothers you, when you have free time, then you must really feel lousy. But since it is only a tiny note, then I needn’t ask you about it. You don’t want to complain. But if you don’t do that, then there is not much left to share. As it is, letters are barely happening. Yes, I would like you to write more about yourself, and to complain as well. Then you would feel better. Is it Spring where you are? Are there only houses in your area, or are there also some open spaces? I’m asking because I’m thinking that i will find it hard to live in a city where there’s house after house after house. I’m already afraid of it. I want the place where I live to have a little natural wilderness nearby. Maybe I’ll get used to civilisation. I will like the rose beds and the lawns, smooth as velvet. Previously, they used to leave me quite indifferent. As soon as there is a more untamed corner, something resonates within me, and I see something of a life that once was, or might be, and that entices me, intrigues me, calms me, even makes me feel happy. I don’t know how it will all turn out, but I know I must get away. Even though I love the fir trees in our little garden, and the view of the distant hills with the fields behind. Surely nature (the same as people…?) are created by our love. What we get from it comes from what we give to it, of ourselves. So it’s not just these fir trees and fields that bind me here, it’s the reflection of me, of my life, that I love in them. I will find that reflection elsewhere, too.

The school holidays are nearly at an end. The girls will go to school again. Now I have them all day long and that is good. For several days now, Inese has been picking beans at the neighbours. She has to work another 2 days and she will  have earned 8 pounds. It is the first money she has earned, and it must be said – it’s quite an amount. I still haven’t had the opportunity to start earning anywhere for my cause. Maybe Sunday I will go to one of the neighbours. So we started, both Inese and I, running to earn money… Like real pauper’s wives. But elsewhere Latvians live grandly. Of course – it doesn’t happen without work. I absolutely don’t care how I earn money, as long as there is the possibility to best use what talents I have.

Today my husband is not at home. It is a beautiful day. In the garden a rosebush in in bloom, and pink peach trees. The sky is lightly overcast and everything is still, no wind. Everything is quietly growing.
I won’t get away anywhere. But I will try. Eternally I come back to that.
But am I the only one shackled? Millions of people are in chains. And if you look at them like that – it is a beautiful tragedy. Only to be the hero of such a tragedy oneself, is – sad.

On a day that has been given to me like a gift, I will make room for everything – letters, exercises on the piano, just taking the time to look around, thoughts – and that, too, is all. I have to do the washing. How do you spend your days, which are your own?
Yours, E. Dzelme

? 8.1956.

I have two of your letters I  must reply to. You say you have forgotten what you wrote in your last letter. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with everything, and probably with yourself too! It was one of your most agitated letters. You said that books, that is, the books you have written, haven’t given you anything, that you haven’t gained anything with it all and so on. I want to protest against all that. But that would be of little use. Your letter shows that the actual notice that makes you dissatisfied, makes you agitated, isn’t really as important as – that the restlessness never stops. I used to think that you had reached some peaceful and sunny state, (back when you used to go walking with [your dog] Jusis), but I guess such a state won’t ever come, and maybe that’s good.

In your last letter it’s as though you closed down and won’t talk to the outside world about your restlessness, about your conflicts. Several times you have said that you aren’t able to be open about yourself, to be as open-hearted as I am, for example. Maybe it’s not so, but in your last letter I felt that you actually don’t want to try any more. I don’t know whether I like that or not. It saddens me if it is because I can’t understand you. But I would agree to it with pleasure if it’s because you have to be the way you are and you can talk about it only to the degree that it doesn’t go against the grain.
I am such a rebel that I rip everything out from within myself, and that gives me pleasure.

At the moment my days are more free. For a week already there hasn’t been anything important to do in the fields. But I’m not managing to do my own work. My surroundings have finally rendered me helpless to rise up against them. I can’t work. Maybe after I get some rest. If not, then I must waste time, till something gives me strength to not feel this spider’s web in which I’m entangled. Maybe I’ve lost patience, maybe something else. Spring will give something back. In the August holidays I might go and work at a children’s summer holiday farm. I can’t find anywhere else to earn enough money to move somewhere else away from here.

Ideas! It’s good to have ideas to fight for. Once, a colleague at the academy said to me “to live is to struggle”. It doesn’t matter what the struggle is for – work, hunger, love… I think he was right. The most real and important thing is the struggle. Victory is brief and – it doesn’t last. Only the illogical part is – that the struggle which doesn’t end with victory, seems – a waste. In fact it is just as rich, as the one resulting in victory. Because the essence of life isn’t to be found in victory, but in the moment of struggle.

7.8.1956.

Thank you for the invitations. Though I can’t make use of them, still I read them and smile. And I can’t say, that I’m really longing to be there. It’s strange, but that “fast-paced cultural life” doesn’t entice me much. What I do want, I don’t know. Solitude is a wonderful thing, if only I could create from it, that is, if what I gain from it, I could somehow “make something eternal”. I wouldn’t even want to devote a lot of time to fraternising. Sometimes it all goes swimmingly, but it wastes time, like children’s games. However, in all honesty, I cannot say that about what you have invited me to. I don’t even know what kind of society is there. 
Though I would like to see the Blue Brush.
I went to Wyong today, but I couldn’t send this letter. 
Yours, E. Dz.

12.8.1956.

…I received a letter from a woman who was our neighbour (in Latvia). who apparently now lives in Sydney. She wrote about other neighbours who stayed in Latvia, which news, even though not good, nevertheless is strangely heartwarming. Among other things, she also mentions that, much moved, she read my Hidden Aiviekste, recognising the characters, who seemed so dear…
…The second letter was from Mrs. Z.  I could get two rooms in her “little garage”. This letter was something special for me. It would be the first real thing, in my getaway plans…

Yesterday we went to have dinner with neighbours (a counter invitation to ours). I played the piano a bit, and got so wound up that I couldn’t sleep. I got enough dexterity back in my fingers to play a Chopin piece or two reasonably fluently. The neighbour’s younger daughter played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (first part). She is only 14 years old and isn’t a very good musician, but in her rendition, actually I got this piece of music for the first time. There was, in addition, and maybe most importantly – the old piano’s mournful, old and beautiful tone. I can’t play it like that, with so much quite primeval sentiment. I have more restlessness and verve, and in general, when I finish playing this sonata’s first movement, I have the feeling that I should start over again and then I could play it so deferentially, slowly, and with so much feeling. But if I start again, I still can’t do it. Yesterday, listening to the girl’s playing, I decided it would be silly to hanker after a new piano – I ought to look for a second-hand one, with a good tone. Ours is so old that after all – it can’t be tuned properly any more.

13.8.1956.

All the time my mind is preoccupied solely with getaway plans. After Mrs. Zagara’s letter, my thoughts have something to attach themselves to. Much now starts to look possible. But I’m afraid, too. Terribly afraid. And only of one person. Maybe that’s not so much – ?

Now I have to act realistically. I have to save. I don’t know whether I will be able to go to the children’s holiday farm as a kitchen maid, because they have promised the position to someone else. But still I must go there and have a look. The nearest neighbour’s beans are flooded – there’s no hope of going there to pick for a good day’s wage. But I have to find something. But then, all the many plans – how to take the children with me, how to get away, how to find a way to leave the one who remains, peacefully – it’s all unimaginable and seems also – impossible.  

14.8.1956.

Inese went to Sydney – to take part in the shot-put competition. Since she won’t come home tonight and won’t bring me the mail, then I have the luck of going to the post office. To look at the roads, that lead away to somewhere. I’m writing by the roadside…

A road has always been a poignant thing to me, something more than an ordinary thing. Now I know, that for an imprisoned person, roads are – sacred!… You, free, so free, that you apparently have too much freedom, you don’t even know what to do with it.
Maybe the way will open for me.
Maybe! But sighs come more often than they used to. Well that’s how it should be. Nothing important can ever be achieved without some sighing.
Regards.    Yours, E. Dz.

28.8.56

This letter was begun ages ago. I don’t feel like doing anything. I feel oppressed. I know how simple and good it would be to live somewhere else, and yet – I don’t know whether fate will allow it? Without some catastrophe, which would scar one or other of us deeply, will I get away from here?
Maybe there is a letter from you. I haven’t received the mail. However I hope to receive it this week.

The only thing I do (in the evenings) for a short while, to feed the soul, is – to play a little. Maybe I must keep the fingers fairly agile, maybe I could earn money with that somehow.
I don’t know whether it’s prophetic, or just stupid fear – I feel despondent. Everything, everything goes to waste.

Today I received a letter from my sister (from the Berkeley Vale Post Office). She lives on a Russian state owned farm by herself, as a supervisor , milking cows. So it’s a hard job (16 cows), but perhaps – one can manage to drink even just a drop of milk… She listens to the radio, hears Latvian songs. She receives the paper “Struggle” (“Cīņa”) and knows they are rebuilding and changing the old Latvia. The older daughter is marrying this month. He’s apparently a good man. That’s good. And it’s good that they all have gotten so far – the kids are already going their own way. A difficult responsibility has been shed.
I will write more another time. Yours, E. Dzelme.

30.8.1956.

Today I received your letter. It put me in a better mood. My oppression seems to stem from not being able to do anything active for my own cause. There is living space that has been promised. But I can’t find work anywhere, so that I could save up some money. I just play in the evenings, and so hold open the possibility of that kind of job. 
Today my husband is not at home, and I raced off to Wyong for the mail, and also to go and check out a job. But that hope came to nothing. I have to wait for some other possibility.

I would also like to help my sister more. All of us here become worthless compared with those there, who suffer most self-sacrificingly. 
The winter is long, the summer short, in Siberia, in the Krasnoyarsk area, where my sister is. On the envelope there was a little picture of a scene from there –  a river bend and a couple of pine trees. She’s been there by herself for 10 years already. Her children were sent back to Latvia. She’s hopeful for something, because she says that maybe soon she will get to see her children. There’s talk that after 20 years since being deported, the sentence will have been served.

I can’t think about anything else these days, only about home and my sister. Her mother-in-law died after a few years, of old age, there in Siberia. At least they were still all together then for a while. But her, that is my sister’s, husband, has his own house, his own car, his weekends with fishing and hunting, travels throughout Canada and America. Naturally he will help his kids if he can. But life is screwed up. 

You liked Latiševa! I haven’t heard her. I saw her photo in the paper. You could say she’s like your neighbourly farmer’s wife! But whether that is naivety or praise, – who knows! One thing is for sure, we women rarely know what is or isn’t beautiful about us. The odd things is that what makes one woman beautiful may not have that effect at all with another.

31.8.1956.

It’s the school holidays, the girls are at home and so I receive the mail less often. It’s also not possible to send letters so frequently.
Thank you for all your good words and advice, all of which do me good. Even though nothing is good. I want to believe that sometime it will be. I want to live. I want happiness. I want things to be straight. Clarity and peace, the sort that exists when a person hasn’t been sucked too deep into mud.

Even if everything won’t get fulfilled, something will be fulfilled. When things are going badly, there’s always more hope that things will get better. It’s easier to rise higher from a lowly starting point. In theory.

About the possibility of money from the Australian Latvian paper – thank you. I don’t need any at the moment. But I will need it around Christmas time, if I begin my move. I probably won’t find any other way of earning money, except to pick peas or beans. That’s not easy work, but usually it pays fairly well. Somehow it will work out, if I try.

It’s spring again and I’m well. I’m playing too much. It overshadows other things. But can’t I allow  myself something in this life? Do I have to sacrifice everything?
I drink coffee – only as a means of survival, to give me strength. Don’t rouse! But if I were to smoke? Would that also be forbidden? Even though you smoke, and most women smoke. Love what you don’t love, do what you don’t want to do, eat what you don’t like and on and on. Doesn’t one finally run out of energy? Shouldn’t one be sometimes allowed to have the forbidden…? To give in to stupid desires, whatever they are? Even to get high on coffee? – Oh OK then – We can’t! I will get high on Spring. 

Anyway, somehow we have to get through it all. I love something, dream of something, see something that isn’t there. But that way I can bear what is. 
Right now perhaps I could do something, if it were allowed. I’m also happy that my sister is somewhere there and we will be able to write to each other. 
I envy you Viralt’s exhibition. It must have been good, the sort that you don’t forget so quickly. Let’s hope for something good. 
Regards! Yours, E. Dz.

15.9.1956.  

If I’m feeling good, wordlessly, not even forming actual thoughts, I nevertheless do remember my friends. If I’m feeling bad, I do the same. To all of them goes my gratitude, and my – curses, which I’d rather be without, and which they could do without. 
E. Dz.

I received your letter with Vija Vētra’s dance performance programme – thank you!
Your enthusiasm about Vētra’s evening could have been greater, taking into account that she also gave you a kiss. But maybe that’s exactly why you’re trying to be so reticent and are looking for fault in her legs and so on.

I got more interested in ballet in Germany, where several times I watched the Leman troupe. What moves me about ballet is probably not connected to either thin or fat legs, but rather I like the temperament of the body, or more correctly – the temperament as expressed by the body, the movements, regardless of the standard of beauty of the limbs. But men see differently.

In my own life, nothing has shifted, nothing has changed. I’m feeling very despondent and impatient. It seems like I’m playing piano a lot – but that’s – little. Rarely can I really give myself seriously to my playing. I really ought to play the scales properly (then difficulties disappear so beautifully…) but it’s exactly the scales I’m hardly allowed to play. If I get to play them for 15 minutes, it sounds to everyone like a terrible din, but I ought to do it for an hour, or two. Not possible.

Your letter, at last. Two! I was totally angry at you. I’ve been really miserable during this time. Twice I myself, and once Inese went (to Wyong) looking for your letter to no avail. I thought – how could you not write? How could you leave me in such loneliness, ignorance and even fear? But that’s all over. I wanted to stay angry at you some more, and not write to you for just as long. I should do it back to you, but I can’t. You have been good to me: “Our Neighbour” has been re-written, L. Kalniņa’s letter forwarded, and you’ll send “Our Neighbour” to Rabac. Thank you for all that. I’m awful to be angry, to even think of getting back at you. But it was hard. Hardest because I’ve grown weary of fighting against my fate. I can’t get better conditions for myself in order to write. I can’t escape anywhere. And I feel that I am worse off than ever, if I give in, give in and give up my last days – for nothing. 

Then I was upset about what would come of my “A Woman’s Journal”. People are starting to write letters with strange offers of help. Since I haven’t received two vital editions of the paper, I began to wonder whether someone had openly attacked me about my bold openness and that maybe you didn’t know what to do, and so didn’t send me the papers. But apparently – it wasn’t so. I felt a release, like from prison. I enclose the letter I received. Put it together with the rest of my writing. After all, I guess it was well meant. If I had received it a few weeks earlier, who knows, I might have tried to go there, even for a week! But it’s school time again, and I have to get the children ready for school and wait for them when they come home – there is no-one who can take my place.

I’m afraid whether I can survive here further. In the end I will wither. I need people. But there aren’t any. And I’ll have to live without anything. That’s why every human word I get from you is so important. L. Kalniņa’s words, and Tamuža’s, are very uplifting. I drink them all in. I need them. They are like life to me. I know that the critique won’t always be uplifting, and in fact – maybe it wouldn’t even be good if it were so, but for me to be able to battle on (to oppose this thing) I need a few good words, – good without reserve. Then I won’t care what happens around me. I will know what I have to do – rely on myself. Learn. Work.

You started to say something, and then didn’t, about 2 professors? They’re probably hungry for fame. That is a sign of weakness. Yes, I think that isn’t a good thing. and a few good jolts can save you from that. When you gets some words of praise from a few people, a person can feel worthwhile and work confidently and wholeheartedly and justify that praise. The whole crowd needn’t lie at your feet, but knowing that you can reach a few good, live hearts – is priceless.

But you’re strange – why don’t you want to come to Sydney? Why do you imagine you’ll be treated like a film star? You will be received warmly like a dear friend. People will discuss, listen, feel uplifted. Well yes – perhaps the public can’t do it all so quietly, they need a bit of volume. You need some sincere, personal friends here, then the visit would be good. 

I’m sending you a handkerchief liberally doused with perfume. When a bad mood bothers you – wave it through the air with a grand gesture. Women flutter about you, what more could you want!
How can I thank Kalniete for the work she put into re-writing “Neighbour”? If it would please her, I could send her one of my lino-cuts.

You exhibited Dzidra’s drawing of the pink head? Yes – Dzidra draws diligently. I’m enclosing a playful drawing of hers, memories of the seaside. She’s quite a little devil, that girl. I have to laugh at her drawings. They have such a subtle sense of humour about everything. Even in this same “Seaside grasshopper”.

Inese is happy about her bursary. But in order to keep it, she has to stay in this same school. I too, have to stay. And that frees me from the endless struggle to get away. But – I’m scared, how will I survive? One could say – it’s only 2 years, and then Inese will go to study, and I will go with her. But these two years – are important. They won’t come again. I have atrophied here. 

24.9.1956

Thank you for your letters. Especially the last one. It says more about you. And thus I feel closer to you. I can better imagine your days. I can live along with you a bit, understand. And – I can tell you about myself. I know that I’m dealing with someone about whom I know something, who listens to my story.

I say ‘know something’, and yet I’m not so sure. You’re pretty mysterious. I tend to regard people as being very similar to myself. That’s a mistake. You, on the other hand, regard others (women, for example) as different to you, unknowable, and that’s not a very good thing either. 

Thank you for the Name’s Day poem. Though it is rather sad… You warn me against dreaming about the future. As though I were expecting too much from it. I don’t expect anything. But there’s so little right now. What then can sustain one? We have to dream about something, have to keep adding something to what is. Sometimes when we do that, the world is beautiful. Even now. 

For six days I picked peas (though not all in a row, and not all day), and earned 8 pounds. I gave 5 of them to the piano tuner. But I didn’t begrudge these hard earned pounds. A well tuned piano is a pleasure, worth the money. Now, every so often, I really play, listen and hear, create tones, beauty. Until now I had only imagined that something could be beautiful and most importantly – was preparing for that. Was only preparing to play.
It’s good that the old piano is here and it sounds so lovely now. I play every now and again.

There are some nightingales here that sound somewhat similar to our nightingales – not quite as splendid, but they land near the window when I play, and they trill along with me with all their might. I can share my song with someone. 

And further, down below, the neighbour is whistling. But that’s already serious stuff. He whistles like I’ve never heard a human whistle. It already has a lot of musicality. He whistles very loudly, the whole valley fills with his whistling, and he has an unbelievably rich tone. When I first heard it, I thought it was on the radio, and I couldn’t work out what instrument it was. But the neighbour’s whistling, like the little nightingale’s song and my playing, sound out only in this lonely valley. Without an audience, without applause. But is it any less beautiful? We momentarily light up another human. And occasionally we gain strength from one another for making new music.

I’m very satisfied that my instrument, having been tuned, has gained a radiance similar to the other musicians in the valley. I assure you – there is much beauty here, and real music, even if we are just would-be musicians.

My piano was tuned by a Dutchman, who has lived in a nearby township for 3 years. I started to wonder if I should take steps to become a piano teacher in that town. There’s not much hope anyway. There’s some absurd, attractive romanticism about – a piano teacher in a small town. (Actually it’s more like grey hair and a bent finger rapping – one, two, three…) Oh no! A piano studio! Sounds of music all day, like at the conservatorium!

I can confirm, to my own delight, that I’m making good progress teaching piano to a tiny, tiny student. She is diligent, like a little gnome, hasn’t missed a single lesson. But her hands are so tiny. But they will grow. If all my students could be like that, then Piano Studio could be written on the door in big letters. My own girls are rather lazy at the piano.
Dzidra does play, but doesn’t want to push herself to harder pieces. Sometimes we play four-hand pieces.

I’m glad that at last you reminded me that – I ought to send something to the competition. I don’t know why, but all the time I was waiting for that from you. Maybe now I will manage to write something. 
Yours, E. Dz.

Saturday 6.10.1956.

I got your letter. It touched my heart. Thank you. You say you went to the cemetery and were musing about how soon those who have gone are forgotten. Maybe that’s so. However, sometimes it happens that they are not forgotten. Some of them are not forgotten.  Maybe they are remembered by someone other than whom you would expect. The living forget everything which isn’t immediately around them, which is no longer enmeshed in their lives. And yet, in some memories, some live long. As long as the one who remembers is alive. But in general, there, where we mingle with friends and seem to be an irreplaceable component, we are soon forgotten. Others take our place.

Your idea that I will disappear in a big city is also one of my secret fears. If I have a job with only middling pay, I will be in chains. I already know how it was when I worked in the hospital; and then I got cooked dinners. To earn my keep I’ll have to work all week, Saturdays I’ll have to do house things, Sundays I’ll want to go to some “cultural event” or to visit someone and the time will have flown, without having done anything creative, for which there’ll be no time. Worst of all – I won’t have time to think about it. Now, despite struggling with all the problems, all the time I am “thinking creatively”. While raging about with all kinds of restlessness, struggles and rebellious thought, in between I give myself to lyrical feelings in music, and nature. There, it will be different. I will be assailed by events, and trivial experiences, even when it might seem that things are going well, but actually it will be nothing more than chaotically wasted time.

And then on top of that – there arises the straight out resistance: during the years I’ve spent in Australia, I have put all my energies into here, and I’d have to leave it for no reason. Maybe these two years, while Inese is finishing her studies, I will have to trundle along right here, and gradually, perhaps switch to teaching music, starting with one or two days a week – in Gosford. It is a township where a piano teacher could do something, as the piano tuner said. But also some piano teacher is going to come there from Sydney. I ought to get there first. But I’m just getting ready,  getting ready, – as always. I really want to be brilliantly prepared, to play really well. In actual fact, a piano teacher doesn’t even need to do that. I will have to push myself to go there next week. The piano tuner told me to look up his wife who works in some ladies’ fashion boutique. The shop  owner has just bought a smart new piano, plays a little, “very beautifully”… So, I must do it. But I’m perfecting and perfecting and wasting time. I could use a bit of the character of those Aiviekste’s locals. Once a teacher in Ilukste said, “Someone else with all your talent, would have risen to goodness knows what heights, but you stand at the edge, and nothing happens.” That’s how it is. I want to do it still better, and all the high spots pass me by. In Gosford I have to rent a room with a piano for 2 days a week. I have to find students… I sigh just writing it – how easy it would be to look for all that, sort it out if I had freedom of movement, if I didn’t have to fight so fiercely just for permission to go out.

Here I have just gained another 2 students, two sisters. Real little wimps. What they will manage to learn, I can’t imagine. They are like dolls, like transparent little minnows… 

But teach them I must, and try to do what I can. I think I can be a good teacher to talented students, I can motivate them and also give critique to their efforts, and  push them to doing it seriously. But with lazy, stupid ones, I don’t have any gift. I don’t have any particular teaching method. But it’s all in the book, and for the lazy ones that will suffice. 

Myself, I have had good piano teachers. In Madona, I was tortured by Professor Dauguls, who later taught a piano class at the Riga Conservatorium. I was so terrified of him, that often I sat outside his house in the dark, on the steps, unable to go inside. He wrote in a note book what had already been set. If something had to be written there a third time, then thunder and lightning followed. So the notebooks after a certain time “disappeared”. But of course you couldn’t save yourself by such means. 

 “You are gifted, but lazy” he once yelled. But it stayed in my mind, and even pleased me, because I knew that I looked lazy because the big girls chased me away from the piano when I wanted to practice. I didn’t dare complain. There was one fiery blond girl, in the same class as me, but a completely different style of lady, with a little ring on her finger (when she wasn’t in Daugul’s class) and fine stockings on her slim legs. I was like a ball of wool, with two small plaits, in a brown velvet dress (on good days) and brown socks and – little boots. Dauguls made this bigger girl (dame) – her name was Austra Jostina – play four-handedly with me, practising for the school concert. She was annoyed with me about that, and teased me, and tricked me out of practising, such that in one lesson with Dauguls I started to cry, and he let us off playing together. We played separately… I played Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”. Later I was amazed that I had been able to play it, because there wasn’t much of me in those days, and I remember on the stage Daugul’s had to put music books on the piano stool to make it high enough for me. He was so good and polite on that occasion – that I couldn’t recognise him, and it all seemed wonderful to me. I can’t remember whether Austra also played, because it comes to mind that in the lesson when I cried, Dauguls was yelling and screaming at her that she wouldn’t be allowed to play solo if she didn’t play properly together with me… But it was all a long time ago. It’s all a bit hazy. After Dauguls went to Riga, we had some  half-German teacher with a limp. We did not respect her because she didn’t hear, or didn’t want to listen to, our mistakes. We could plunk away – well or badly – it was all the same. After that, we had no other teachers. I began playing together (preparing pieces for four hands for the school concert) with a youth from one of the senior classes. I was already in second year at high school. We fell in love. That too was crazy. We played our 4 handed Spanish dances till 11 at night in the school hall. The headmaster (J. Dobuls, who was called Kozis) came upstairs from his residence and listened to the whole of our Beethoven symphony (and we used to rip through them) and said – we had to go to bed. For a long while I didn’t have a teacher. But I always kept playing. 

At the academy, there was a youth from my neighbourhood area, a fiery fellow, who played the violin. We played together in the town hall at Saviena (which was used as a concert hall at that time). We played gypsy dances such that the strings snapped. We earned 15, 20 or 30 lats, depending on the occasion. There was an interesting old teacher there, called Viksniņš, slight, and gentle. Not a great musician, but a great lover of music, and he loved playing the violin. Ernest, the violinist – the number one violinist – outshone him. They played duets. Then, solo, Ernest played fiery dances and melodically colourful pieces, and, solo, Viksniņš played – endlessly long, dreary sonatinas… Oh one could write stories about those days…

One day at the academy, that same Ernest enticed me to go to the state conservatorium. I started playing there for Leo Demants. I did brilliantly there. Later I didn’t even have to pay school fees. Soon I surpassed even his best student and at the conservatorium concert, she and I together played four-handedly on two pianos.

I fell in love with Demants as well (you can laugh). We were all in love with him. I have begun writing a story about that, but I don’t know when I will finish it. Because of this love, I progressed marvellously in my music. He said wonderful words of praise to me. But for this same silliness, this being in love, I lost the capacity to play freely from memory. it happened thus: I was playing Schubert’s Impromptu No.4 (from memory). I was sailing through it grandly. He was standing behind the grand piano opposite. Accidentally I caught his eye and – stop! I stopped and didn’t know a or b, or what I was supposed to play. Even if I’d been cut with a knife, as the saying goes, “you have to know it by heart so well that you could even play it in the middle of the night” he said. Till then, that’s what I’d been able to do. From that moment on – I never relied on my memory again neither for the melody, nor for the fingers’ mechanical memory. I learned note by note. And at any moment, I could “fall out” of the piece I was playing. It was awful. In actual fact, it was a catastrophe, and its impact lasted forever. (I’ve never since been game to play from memory). But my piano career had still a different end. Demants went on a tour of Western Europe and encouraged me to go to Gomane, or Dauguls,  to work privately for a while and then sit the exams for the senior courses at the State Conservatorium. I did that. I went to Gomane. She wouldn’t take me. She wouldn’t take any extra students, she already had too many. She was already closing the door, but I persisted and somehow squeezed  inside, I don’t know how I had the courage. She was a bit shocked, but politely repeated the same thing – that it’s an awful pity, but that she couldn’t. In the room there were two grand pianos, with the lids open. I manoeuvred towards them and asked Please – could I play. She let me, and I played the same Schubert that I had played for Demants. I think she understood what the playing was a plea for. When I finished, she said – “Ok then – come for lessons. They were devilishly expensive lessons, and my uncle  paid for me. I prepared for the State Conservatorium exams, to get into the final class. Then my left hand began aching. I remember Gomane exasperatedly saying “everyone who can really play overworks their hands.”  …I didn’t dare  practise too long at a time. I was careful, but nothing helped (not even massage). My hands got tired and ached. The summer intervened and gradually I was able to prepare for the exams, but I panicked and cried and if I couldn’t play like crazy – I didn’t play at all, and didn’t turn up for the exam, didn’t reply to their letter.

I finished at the Academy.
Then, after a few years, I discovered it wasn’t practising that was to blame for my sore hands, but the Schumann piece we had chosen (“Arabesque”) which was too hard for my left hand. That is – Gomane, trying to hurriedly prepare me for the exams hadn’t noticed that the joints of my hand hadn’t been adequately worked in to play that piece properly. The movement isn’t difficult, but it’s tiring if your hand is not used to it, hadn’t worked it out, (or maybe is just being held incorrectly). If she had taken the piece that she originally wanted to give me (a piece by Franck, but she changed her mind) it’s possible that my whole life could have gone in a completely different direction. I would have graduated from the Conservatorium. I don’t know whether I would have been a good pianist, even though several times Demants declared that I would. But I certainly would have made a good accompanist. In that field countless times I received astonishing acknowledgment and myself felt that I was good at playing in such ensembles, that I have a sure rhythm, am enthused and moved by synchronising with the playing of another.

All this long story, which I’ve suddenly let pour forth tonight is because the pleasure of writing has carried me away. You might think I don’t know how I play. That’s not so. I play fairly well. The technique has not been perfected enough to boast more than that.  My playing does not have that nervous tentativeness that sometimes surprises me in others. Maybe there is an agreeable fluency, punctuated by occasional tempestuousness. But technique is still missing, and another disturbance is the lost ability to play freely off by heart. If I were allowed, I would try to practise for about half a year, 4-6 (or 8!) hours a day, as musicians do. 4 hours would suffice for me. Maybe I could still perfect my technique. Now I play irregularly 1-2 hours per day and am slowly moving ahead. It hasn’t any real value. I can’t be a pianist any more, and I don’t know how I could make use of my achievements if I were to play better and better. And at the moment it’s not worth wracking my brain about it. Some spend their time playing cards, others dance, go fishing and so on, all kinds of hobbies. I play the piano.

The only thing wrong is that I have too little freedom, for playing should not have to be fitted into the same space as writing and drawing, which I could also be doing. But I can’t really expect it to be so good. I should be happy that I have somehow stuck up for my supposed rights, to play as much as I do now. What will happen further – who can tell? If I were economically independent, everything would be easier. But nor can money undo every entanglement. 

I have been writing this letter to you for two evenings. The joy of writing grabbed me. Of course I should have made use of the time differently – and written something else.
Maybe later. I can’t manage any more tonight. I’m getting sleepy. I get up before sunrise and all day do bits and pieces. Tell me about your “hut” as you call it.
Yours, E. Dz.   

 19.10.1956

I don’t want to let this day go just yet. I had all the usual, everyday burdens today. But in it, there was a glimmer of some kind of light. A Sunday face, which gave a smile, indistinct, as though through a dusty cobweb. And I long endlessly for the smell of birch. I long so very much – that I put my hand on my brow to try to deflect these blinding longings. Or – perhaps, to push something aside, and really find the smell of birch.

In the garden, among the other bushes, we’ve discovered a little lilac bush. It has a singe blossom. That’s why I found it. I already found it yesterday. Nevertheless it, with its blooming in the garden, was important today.  

Today was empty, like all the others. But I saw, here, in this land, spring coming. That moment, when you can smell the birches. (In another land. Another time.)
I hang suspended over the valley. I have promised myself – to live. To be very happy this month. To enjoy every hour. Maybe that’s why I will love today. 

People are tied down. John Plase (Jānis Plase) had a painting – “Rhythm”. It was of people, connected, as though their feet were growing out of common ground, swaying with their bodies and arms in some sort of rhythm. The endless struggle, useless struggle to free themselves, maybe desperate because they can’t do it, maybe in some sort of happiness – that they can move their arms!
I am cemented to this place. But others too, are cemented. We’re all undulating in some desperate rhythm, in which once, happiness was detectable. 

I  play a little in the evenings. The way it is good to play, the way one should play. In the day, in the afternoon, occasionally for a brief moment I also play. But I pounded the piano a bit too much, I couldn’t control some sort of outburst, and I played more harshly than I should have, than I intended. I played some Chopin Etude, badly, with some mistakes, and yet perhaps with more truth than at other times. 
I don’t want this day to end. E. Dz.

22.10.1956

Perhaps tomorrow I will get a letter from you. I haven’t had one in ages. But I can’t wait till I get it and then send mine because I have to send this letter so that it gets to you on time. I’m not really in a very good mood – it turns out that I want to take part in the short story competition and I can’t – I can’t finish the story I’ve begun, which all this time I’d calmly put aside for that. Tonight I’ve been struggling with rewriting “Inge” and I’m already half asleep.

Now I’d really like it if there was another month to go. It turns out that not every time can I get inspired and write whatever I like.
Spring here is lovely now. I love it better than other years, I don’t know why. But I also feel more fenced in. Nothing can set me free. And still it is lovely.

I received another letter from my sister. She is seriously hoping to get to Latvia next winter. One of her daughters has just married in Latvia. Laudona’s church has been burnt down. That was a beautiful church. Strange, that life still goes on there. People grow up and blossom and also have some of what we call happiness. And strangely enough – that also happens here… Life force is stronger than everything. Regardless of how the face of the world gets distorted, life finds a way and grows across it all.

23.10.1956

It’s early morning and my head is clearer. I’ll have to wait and see what your letter will say. Perhaps there will be some advice, something inspiring. But for now, I’m sending you “Inge” and I’ve enclosed one of her (Dzidra’s) drawings of faces – it’s one of her pastimes. Dzidra sent her drawing (in ink) to the Children’s section  of the Sydney newspaper, and got a 10 shilling “prize” and the drawing is in the paper. She is so happy. Inese will have her exams soon, but before then (tomorrow) there is a dance performance evening. She has to get her costume ready. Myself, every day I have to find, and cut very small, 2 buckets full of green grass. We have 500 baby chicks. Looking for the grass is lovely, cutting it ruins the fingers. But gradually I straighten them again. Only then the bean picking will start, and there won’t be time to breathe.

I don’t know what to take for a motto. On the table are Dzidra’s cards. I’ll choose diamonds – good. I’m waiting for your letter. There hasn’t been one for ages, and I don’t even know how are you going now? Write about yourself.
Yours, E. Dz.

25.10.1956

Dear Mr. Kalniņš,

I sent you a long letter, enclosing “Inge” for the competition, instructing you how to open it with a knitting needle, in case you had to hand it in to the judging panel unopened, but that was very foolish. 
1) I forgot that you are the chairman of it all and thus can surely open the letter anyway,
2) and if it wasn’t so, I forgot the “anonymous” requirements and wrote my address on the back of the envelope. Please forgive me for all that.
Was I supposed to put “Competition” on the corner, as I had to when I sent it to England?
In any case, I hope that you will manage it all. If you need an envelope, stick some paper over my address.

Yesterday I got your letter. Thank you.
Thanks for the description of your hut. Now I can more or less imagine how you live. I still want to finish a story about my neighbour and send it to you before the first of November. Not much hope of doing that though. I don’t expect it will be suitable for the competition, but I’m enjoying working at the moment. 
Yours, E. Dz.

1.11.1956

Rereading your letter, I remembered that I hadn’t answered your question – where to send the money. Today I hope to receive a letter from you again, maybe it will evoke much writing from my side too, and with that the money issue will be forgotten again. That’s why I’m mentioning it now at the beginning – send the money to my home address. Lately there hasn’t been any danger from repressive control and I won’t be prevented from receiving money. But please – send only the money I’ve earned already, not an advance for the future. In general I need money very much, but more than that, I need to save it. If I have money here – it goes very quickly. There’s so much that is needed. If I don’t have money – somehow I survive. Today I picked beans. They’ve started already. I get up at 5, at half past I cut greens for the chickens, it takes a long time, and my day’s chores are made very much longer. But I can’t escape them. While I can’t earn anything decent elsewhere, I have to do everything here. I haven’t even had time to quickly read through again – neither my story about the neighbour, nor my letter to you. It’s never been so absurd. I re-wrote the story, changing lots from the first version, so I should have re-read it, but I didn’t have time. I finished it right at the last minute to be able to send it to you that day. Today I would like to sit here and start writing something else. But today, there’s no time. Yesterday I had a stormy conversation with my boss, that is – I talked. I screamed out all my demands for free time and freedom to act, and I also screamed out a lot of my plans. All that I achieved is that his sarcastic smirk and anger disappeared from his face. He took some of it very seriously. And that is good. Maybe he’ll have to give in to my working a day or so each week outside the house with piano teaching, and perhaps then gradually I’ll build up more time. There’s no way I can hope to peacefully get the girls to Sydney with me. But in a couple of years Inese will go to Sydney anyhow. Till then I will battle for my gradual independence. The first bit will be the hardest. There are people here who travel from Sydney to go to work (one of Inese’s teachers). Maybe I could travel to Sydney for work, if things go well for me in Gosford. We will see. I say that so that it will be easier, so that It’s not all so heavy – the daily battle, the thinking, the unexpressed thoughts.
I will wait for your letter.

3.11.1956

Today, for the first time this year, I’m at the beach with the girls. One girl is tired from sitting for bursary exams, the other has a bit of a croak in the throat, but has to go to Sydney to take part in some sporting competition. Thus, knowing the sea’s great healing powers, we came here today to rest. It’s still cold, nevertheless I hope the girls will gain some strength.

There was no letter from you, presumably you’re very “busy”. However, maybe there will be a letter soon, and it will also tell me about what I sent you – my written piece. I should start another, but I haven’t done it yet. We sent you (to Melbourne) 2 bags of beans. This time I picked them by myself. All the beans aren’t ready yet. The real picking hasn’t begun yet. I was also in Gosford. I put the advertisement in the paper: that I’m looking to hire space for teaching piano. Money-wise, if there’s a few pounds for me, please send them. I’ll need them to hire the space. My husband put me off with the usual jealous tirade, but I guess I have to contend with that. In the end he doesn’t utter a sensible word, neither for nor against it all, I’m without advice, without support, but have to struggle on my own. Maybe a life and death struggle.

6.11.1956

I just saw Dzidra off, setting out for Sydney. She’s travelling together with some woman whose daughter came first in running. They will compete in the sports carnival tomorrow. Dzidra is very happy about the trip, lots to see and experience. I’m happy that she’s happy. I was sewing and ironing till late last night, so that she will look lovely. Today I went with her to the woman’s house, and now I’m waiting for the bus to go home. Sitting here at the bus stop, I’ll finish my letter to you. I still haven’t received a letter from you. You haven’t written for ages. But maybe that’s just my imagination? What do you think about the war? Yesterday, tears fell about Hungary. I’m no particular lover of Hungarians, but it goes right to the heart, the way they are shedding their blood. Maybe they will achieve something. Although – the hearts of those big, free men are unmoveable – they are just doing their business. 

How good it is to be away from home. To linger in a world that perhaps once was mine, but not any more, still it warms me to reminisce. 
Yours, E. Dz.

8.11.1956

Journal Entry

A bitter work day. A slave’s day, doing someone else’s bidding, listening to someone else’s demands, suffering rudeness, being demeaned, and knowing – that my strength is waning, my work remains undone, and there’s less and less time. I witnessed something today, something that could be regarded as an insignificant, everyday thing, but having observed it, I let it go, maybe it will already be behind me, out of my life.

Time is running out. But nothing has been done. As possible as it seems sometimes – to jump out of this bog, so at other times it seems impossible. So too today, I don’t see a way out. But – it’s a beautiful day. The clouds are forming as though for a storm. The wind tosses them about, a warm summer wind, and they look soft and fluffy, merry. They move across the valley, with the little house right on top of the hill in the distance, and it’s as though heaven was cradling the valley in its arms, as though heaven had bent down close to the earth, holding it in its lap, close to its heart. The valley is misty, full of warm air which vibrates and flows. The valley is happy. 

How different it is on cold days, when the heavens are clear and far away. Then the valley shrinks and the little house on the hill stands as on stone, freezing. The sky does not see it. Today is a day when everything locks in close, the summer pulsates outside, and in the garden where the jasmine blossoms fall. Summer is passing, is already over. It’s only coming, and yet I feel it’s slipping away, passing. No-one holds me in their heart, the way the heaven holds the earth today. I am chained to bare rock. Days dawn and wane, and pass me by. My days, which aren’t mine – are never-ending.

We are spraying tomatoes. I glanced over the fence at the grass, the road, a view I recognise from the time when I was free to go as I pleased, remembered like a buried corpse remembers life. I look at the road and remember that I have stood there, alive. How long? A moment, an hour, half-a-lifetime? There’s no measuring such time – just that I’ve stood, alive, and the grass has caressed me, become part of me, because I have been free, happy.

Tear away my chains! This memory spurs me on. But the iron cuts into my flesh and I stand immobile. Still – I glance again over the fence, to feel the bidding – tear away my chains!
And I know that I would be willing to take on the nature of a snake, so that what I couldn’t tear up, demolish, I would crawl away from, secretly, cunningly, on my stomach. Like a snake. 

8.11.1956

Your letter shows that you are happy about something, even though you have been battling depression. Maybe it’s over? Your letter makes me happy because there’s something happy in it, and because it tells me – two people have acknowledged “My Neighbour” as successful (by my standards).That is nice. When I send you some story, I usually wait impatiently to see what the judgement will be. Usually – it’s good. But only later, when it is compared to other works does it get put into perspective. When I reread “Inge” after quite a long while, (when I was rewriting it) I liked it better than when I first wrote it. When I wrote it, I really didn’t think it would be able to be deemed a short story, it was just a kind of musing, and maybe that was why it hadn’t been composed well. But be that as it may. The idea for the story is illusive, partly undisclosed. We take it to be a short story simply because it’s been written down as such. Maybe it’s just material for something. Though you could also say that about “Our Neighbour”. But at the moment I can’t do any more to it.

You have received surprisingly many works. 23 writers is a veritable forest of writers. It’s probably quite interesting to read anonymous works. With the familiar writers you can probably guess who’s who from the style. Nevertheless, you note that good works are few. Still, it will be a bit of an event in the lives of the Australian [Latvian] writers. I’d like to finish the pieces I have begun, but there’s hardly any time to do anything. In the evening I am very tired, and though I can now work in the other room (electricity is all over the place now, and it’s not so cold any more that only the room with the fireplace is bearable), nevertheless I don’t feel able to be alone, undisturbed, and can’t give myself over, securely, to my writing. It’s easier to do rewriting in these circumstances. Even though I always correct something when I’m rewriting, it’s not so intense a concentration on the task as writing it the first time.

At the moment I’m only playing the scales. I can’t play in the evening because Inese is studying hard, sitting for exams. In the afternoons, when I’m preparing dinner, I can steal only a half hour, which gets used up in doing the scales. I want new sheet music. On 23rd November I hope to go to Sydney, a bus going from the primary school to the zoo, mothers can come too. I’ll probably go. Then I’ll buy something new. I don’t know what gifts and abilities I have had in music, but it has always stayed part of my life. I think it would be hard for me to be satisfied with just playing. I’ve never felt any kind of ability for composing, but to only play other’s creations, is – to not know creation. You can put yourself into another’s composition, but it’s somehow different. You can be wildly carried away, and in ecstasy, but not that humbling, almost sacred sense of peace which comes when something, even something insignificant is created from the beginning. I think that humility and respect are exactly what a person learns to feel by experiencing artistic creation and these are two things that a real human being should know.

Oh, so Meilerte kissed you near your ear! Not a bad choice of place. Big lovers also often choose it. I must admit though, that if a man has made me want to kiss him, it’s usually been because of some facial feature, near the corner of the mouth. This, for me, is usually a dangerous spot.

I don’t know whether I would behave like Meilerte (and also Vētra) but if I think about meeting you somewhere sometime, I can’t imagine the meeting in any other way than a real, old fashioned hug. But it’s not likely to happen. Others travel from one continent to another, but for you and me, a walk with Jusis [the dog] is a big thing. When will it be different?

It’s a beautiful morning. I got up at five. I’m getting breakfast ready, and in between will finish my reply to your second letter. How beautiful the mornings are! And how hopeful one is rendered by them. It’s like I’m flapping my wings. (You can laugh!) But I feel it quite physically. I want to extract myself quickly, more quickly from my mundane jobs, I want to rush into life – to play, write, and so on, but my wing flapping grows slower and slower, the weight of the day’s routine tasks grows and grows. I can’t get away, and any space I find is so brief, just a moment’s abandon, not work and yet – in the mornings I still feel my wings. It’s a particularly lovely morning, in nature, and in me. Dzidra will return from Sydney, where she’s been competing in sport for two days. I know how hard it is to get prizes, first places, and even if the child hasn’t won anything it will be a pleasure see her after these couple of days absence. The other child is carving chemical formulas into her brain, from five o’clock in the morning. Everyone is toiling away, with heads steaming.

Don’t be in a bad mood. Be happy. Did I mention – love? Well, that must be done. Love something alive. Preferably a human. Don’t ask whether they love too. That’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is to give, not get. And in giving, usually you also get something, beside the pleasure of giving.
No, now I must go. My breakfast will be overcooked.  Cheers! Yours, E. Dz.
P.S. Perhaps you will have to pay some extra for this letter – but nothing can be done about it, I have put in some jasmine blossoms.

19.11.1956

Thank you for the money. I just received it. A strange letter, with no note, nothing to sign, no word – just money. A bit of a scary letter. I hope that soon there will also be some scrap of writing, which will soften the strange feeling of severity.

Today I already wanted to send you a very sad letter, but I didn’t do it because I didn’t have time. Now, in the evening, I can write a bit more happily: two weeks ago already I put advertisements in the paper twice, about looking for space to rent for giving piano lessons. The paper promised to send me any offers. I waited in vain. Now I rang – it seems there are a couple of replies after all. My mood improved a bit. Now I have to try to get to Gosford again, as the chosen place. It will be difficult. Already I have spend my second week in the bean patch. But if it’s not Joe’s bean patch, then it’s not easy. Otherwise, my bean picking capacity is beginning to be respected; and my work isn’t criticised… Only, it’s never enough… But everything passes. The picking will end too, sometime. Hopefully before Christmas, and then I’ll have more time to struggle with my plans. They weigh quite heavily on me – each and every step has to be fought for against huge opposition.

At the moment I am very tired. I’m getting up at 5 in the morning. Now it’s 9 at night, everything is more or less done, and in the end I’ve also played piano for an hour. However, the hands feel heavy. Often it feels like I’m struggling in vain. But also I often believe that sometime luck will smile on me and I’ll be able to sort a few things out to my advantage.

Your letter about the talk with Z. Barda really delighted me: 2 men thinking well of me and – drinking to that. That’s – marvellous.
I’m a bit curious, will Z. Barda be able to find my story among the others, that is, recognise it? It should be that way. I should have enough individuality for someone to find it worth  – standing or falling for.
Good night.

22.11.1956

Today you have the start of the Olympic Games. Will you be there? Will you meet some Latvians from Latvia?
Things aren’t going really well for me – the hot weather and maybe the bean picking, had me get up one morning with a “bad heart”. I have had pains in the heart (a nervous heart, they said) since I was 24 years old, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Here in Australia I was doing well, only this last year has been much worse, and recently it was suddenly really bad. Maybe it’s because of working during the rather hot days, and without a break. Now for 2 days, I saved myself a bit from the mighty “industriousness” and it’s better now. It can also influence my future plans. But I have to try even harder to get away. Yesterday in the morning I escaped from the house to Gosford. There are 4 whole offers of rooms with pianos to rent. One – the first one I looked at, I took. Later I realised that Thursdays and Saturdays (the only days available) are not that good. On Saturdays – it’s the weekend and the children won’t come to play. But two things are good – it’s close to the centre of town, and on the other days the space is used by a singing teacher – maybe there will be people around who have to do with music. Maybe I’ll manage to catch some students – I don’t have any yet. It’s like I’m struggling in the dark, but it’s possible that, as long as I don’t run out of strength myself, the main yokes at home will be shed. Inese supports me in my plans. Yesterday morning, I don’t know if I don’t know if I would have managed to get ready and off running for the bus if she hadn’t encouraged and helped me. I feel very much, that she’s standing by me.

It’s a pity I didn’t send you a letter earlier, but these days have been such that I couldn’t. There’s nothing of importance in this letter either, except how very much the banknote you sent does help, as does your approval of the piano teaching plan, and every word, for which I want to thank you. 

Time is running out for me to tear myself away, because my physical strength is waning. I’m also getting some support from a Latvian family here. I gave them one of my drawings. Now we happened to be at an optician’s in Gosford (I went in with them for company’s sake) and later in the conversation I didn’t hide the fact that I needed glasses for reading and playing. Maybe they saw that I was refraining from getting them for lack of means – I received a letter with a cheque for exactly £8.13 – exactly enough for glasses. It was a bit embarrassing, but somehow they knew how organise it – so that I can feel grateful and can accept this gift. (With the hope that later I will be able to give in return). People, as you once said, are better than one might expect, and you can see they want to help, given a chance. Now the important thing is – to stay strong and healthy myself.
Now I have to finish. No time left.}
The heaviest stuff has been shed in this letter. The air is clearer.
Yours, E. Dz.

28.11.1956

I haven’t a moment’s time, I can’t even sit down, but I must do it anyway – I  won’t be able to stand another whole day picking beans (it’s already been 17 days in a row), if I don’t sit down for a minute and say a few words to you.
Thank you for both your letters. I admit – I’m feeling very happy. Only it dissipates in that desert, and I need it so much. Nevertheless – much, much joy!

If I get a prize, and moreover 1st prize, as Mrs. Tamuza thinks, then maybe I’ll be able to have a book, and somehow get out of here. Maybe. 
A heartfelt thanks to you that you also are pleased for me. I need that. I’ve no-one to share my pleasure with, and I miss that very much. I remember my neighbour, and how happy she would be. It was exactly writing that was her dream for me. The drawing part she just suffered along with me. But she is no longer, who would have shared my joys and my thoughts.

Maybe I’m happy that the readers of the magazine award me with the prize, but I have yet another deeper joy – that you and Mrs. Tamuza and maybe others too, recognise as best among my works those that are the most ordinary, most open bits of my life. It is my life, my self (not the theme but the substance)- so it means art is not so difficult to achieve, it is within me, it just has to be revealed, and it’s good to do that. I don’t want to say that I’m sure about what I must do, but there are indications – not to go grasping at mountain tops but to listen, to discover through myself.

Inese, having brought your letters, sat opposite me and told me of her joy, that her exam results were higher than she had hoped for. Then I opened your letters and I had to divulge a thing or two of my own joy. She is a clever girl. She is always reading. The English teacher lends her his own personal books. She survived the exams well and didn’t wear herself out too much. Dzidra too came 3rd in her class. The report reads – “A really good girl, talented in many ways, makes the best use of her time”. And she really does, she’s never not doing something, always inventing and creating something.
Now I have to run to the beans, but now it’s easier.

29.11.1956

The weather is hot and the beans never-ending. It’s hard picking in the heat. But in the hot weather the beans will finish more quickly. So then – let there be hot weather, and maybe I’ll conquer these beans. This time it’s worse than ever. Maybe I’m weaker and the beans are more plentiful. But that’s also one of the reasons that makes me plot and scheme about how to get away from here. The room with the piano is there in Gosford, but there aren’t any students yet.

No-one has replied to the advertisement in the paper. I ought to be staying there at least a couple of days a week, otherwise I won’t get them. But – when such staying there could ever begin, I can’t imagine. Perhaps after Christmas… But if nothing comes of it, I will have missed my chance to get to Sydney, and how I could manage that – I don’t really know. Maybe it’s great tiredness that is again pushing me towards feeling hopeless, but I don’t know how to prevent it.

Thanks for the money. But if a receipt  is not necessary, then I’ve forced it out of you yourself and probably there’s nothing from the paper. But I will write something that the paper will want to publish, and then I’ll earn it back.
Yours, E. Dz.
P.S. “Our Neighbour” won’t be able to be published…
P.P.S. Think of some other title for your novel, something that indicates that it is from the Bible.

8.12.1956

If you want to publish “A woman’s journal” there needs to be a reason – is that work better than others? What can I do! Yet again – the most revealing is the best. Please write and tell me whether you received a “Page from a Diary” which talks about the Estonian (graphic) artist Vitralt’s picture “Hell” and later about some woman who was beating her mother? I think I sent it along with some other work.

Thank you for taking the trouble to rewrite my manuscript – I probably started it as a letter to you, and then it changed into a “Page from a Diary”, stood here for a while, and then I sent it to you because the beginning had been written on both sides of the paper.

Inese just came home from school, and has been told that she is second, not third, in her class (having beaten some boy by a few marks). Inese is happy about her achievements, specially because her father always puts her down for not studying much, “reading novels”. Inese reads a lot, and that’s good. Dzidra reads a lot too. It’s true what you say, that children are proud of their parents. (I too was proud, and still am). I have to try to not disappoint her in her hopes for me. Dzidra is the one who boasted that I play the piano (that’s how I got my students), and also that I am an “artist”. She doesn’t know much about my writing. And that doesn’t seem important to her. If I could write a book – only then would I be something in her eyes in this regard. She’s right.

I read in the (Australian) paper that some book has come out, which shows that passionate love has been an important component of our lives only in the last (or recent) centuries. The Greeks and Romans didn’t value it very highly, and even regarded it as a sickness… That interests me somewhat. I regard passionate (crazy) love as something above all else, which “lifts us up to the divine eternal”, but I have also come to the conclusion that it is just a soap-bubble if one wants to use it as the basis of everyday life. Maybe I value it too highly. No, that’s not true, it’s not even possible to value it too highly. Only our longings, which it evokes, delude us. In reality, we don’t want what we want! Because the fulfilment of our wishes isn’t what we wanted. We actually wanted something else. Truth is, there are only longings, that we don’t really want fulfilled.
Cheers, Yours, E. Dz.

14.12.1956

Thank you for your letter about – the prize! Thanks for the toast! Thanks from the bottom of my heart! I wish I could even just ring someone today. 
This isn’t right. I can’t bear this life anymore. I just waited for your letters, which upliftingly brought better and better news, till now there’s a prize and a toast! And you all together reward me so well. But without it, I couldn’t live, either! And it’s still too little. I walk as though a stone weighs down my heart. As though something were sinking and being lost and I am chained up and cannot save it. Today I would like at least freedom enough that we could all go to the seaside – but tomatoes! If not beans (they’ve been conquered) – then tomatoes. And suddenly I can’t bear it anymore, I’m going crazy. But it’s pointless. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll go to the beach – but it won’t be the same as – if it had been today. Only for the physical rest. I can see that nothing can uplift me spiritually here. I want to work, I want to live.

Thanks for the toast! It was lovely that you drank to me. I need it very much. Yesterday I got your letter. I couldn’t sleep last night. Because of what I have to do, achieve! I couldn’t sleep also because I had no-one with whom I could share my joy. Yes, Inese was really happy and gave me a hearty kiss, and the little one cried – “What does it say that gives you such a happy smile?” “A prize” I say. Prizes are raining down on us all at the moment. For Inese, a book for being second in class, for Dzidra a book from some association for being the best drawer in the school, for me a prize for my story. But what is totally predictable joy for them, for me is too much – I am not allowed to work, and I can’t find out whether I can really write the next story even better, for of course one must write only better and better! …I have to write to you so I can sleep tonight. I can’t run anywhere  with my happiness and my self doubts; I thought – to the one closest to me, my enemy that I’m married to – but he has been so destructive in this area, that I refrained. Then I thought – to Joe! But I don’t have him, that’s already all “gone with the wind”. To you. Yes, to you, but you are far away. Then in my imagination I kissed all five of you – the ladies, the smart, sort of shy Breman, Barda, about whom I’ve not the slightest idea of what he’s like, and you. And then I wanted to sleep. But that didn’t work out either. See how crazy it is to be so young. 

You really are a terrible nosey one – where did you find my date of birth?
Thanks for the congratulations – of course! But as the saying goes – you can do it, but it’s not nice… Here and everywhere, shamelessly, I pretend to be 10+ years younger. It’s very necessary, it’s a matter of business. To be anything, for anything to work out and for people to trust me, I mustn’t be too old.
Now maybe I’ll be able to sleep. It feels easier after this mindless chatter.

20.12.1956

This year Christmas has caught me unprepared. I had still intended to go somewhere today and do Christmas shopping, but it looks like I have to stay home. I have nothing to send you, though I’d like to, so that you’d have something from me to hold in your hand at Christmas. Maybe it’s rather frivolous, but I’ll enclose with my letter my handkerchief (very plain, with perfume which I used on it because I couldn’t find the one I wanted). Crush up this handkerchief and drop it in your hut, then be caught by surprise – “how careless – she forgot her handkerchief here!”…Who? That you can decide for yourself. Maybe you will discover to whom it belongs.
Yours, E. Dz.
I’m sending you this sketch, which is a continuation of “Our Neighbour”, or runs parallel to it (but only – in tone).

E. Ķikure

Joe had found work away from home. He wasn’t particularly overjoyed – having to go away all week, to work some job just for the money, be away from his fields. But Joyce had already been wanting if for a long while – that he be something more than just a farmer. Maybe she would not be so restless. His life would run more smoothly. However, since the news that Joe would start working elsewhere, nothing had improved! Her edginess grew and grew, always finding new ways of biting. Of course he was always annoyed with himself, that he himself could not bear things, could not bear mundane trivia, the same as she could not bear it without drama. Just a single, inconsiderate word first thing, it did not matter about what, spoilt his whole morning. And then at lunchtime, of course, yet another such word, some bluster, some reproach, some putdown, that comes just when peace had settled in, when things had cleared, like waters in a pond.

In a way he was pleased about the pending freedom. Actually this hope of freedom had carried him through the last few weeks. Though sometimes he was overcome by worries about the children – would they not suffer when he was away? Or become strangers to him? And his home? And his fields? Empty, overgrown with weeds…

He tidied up his farm as though he were preparing to go away on a trip. Put his car in order in the little shed – lined up the hoes, axes, shovels, saws, water hoses, the horse’s things, on the wall. Cleaned and oiled the electricity generator. Sold most of the second-hand bean sacks, rolled up the pea wire. Piled up the tomato cases in high, tight rows – that way they looked much smaller. They hardly seemed to take up any room any more.

Only the plough and the harrow did he still leave down there, by the edge of the tomato field, near the water pump…

He could put peas in the tomato field. After taking off the tomatoes, the ground there was more or less ready. In two days he could get them done. He had seed left over. Manure, more than he needed. Stakes, wire… And you did not have to use the sprinkler on peas. With peas, it was not so necessary to be punctual with picking them, they could wait, if necessary, for a couple of days. He could do that at leisure at the weekends, when he was home. It was just the right time to put in peas.
Only he was reluctant to tell his wife.
To admit – how very much he needed this land. To work this land.

And he couldn’t put in the peas without saying anything. He did nothing. He’d been thinking about it for several days. Of course – he could sow the peas without telling Joyce, and he would have done it if that had been the end of it, over in one day. But it wouldn’t be like that. She would torment and badger him about it the whole time, while ever a single pea remained visible in the paddock. And he didn’t have the strength to let himself in for that. That’s how it would be, if he told his wife about having planted the peas at a bad moment. Only if he was lucky enough to mention it at an opportune moment, when she wouldn’t immediately get upset about it, when she would sort of agree – having not really been paying attention, didn’t think it important, and so later it would be as though she had given consent, and then she would leave it alone even if later she did not like it, when he worked on the peas at the weekends. 

He was ashamed of his timidity, despised himself and postponed the business of the peas a hundred times. But there was no other way. He had to be timid again, as always, had to be cowardly all over again, to demean himself in her presence. He was not able to stand up to her endless acidity, her put-downs. He wanted peace. Even though he well knew that – that would never exist either, even if everything went according to her wishes.
*
Exhausted more from his own churning thoughts than from clearing up the garage, Joe slowly closed the shed door and went down past the garden to the plough. A pleasant freshness rose from the dam. The large horse lifted its head from drinking and gazed peacefully at its master. The horse pulled its fore-legs out of the mud, into which it had slid, and slowly came up to its master. Joe held its warm, soft muzzle in his hand for a moment, wiped the spider webs from the horse’s mane and lashes and his face brightened. Near his horse, he always felt as though life returned to him from some hiding place. And trust, and serenity. He went a few steps further to the edge of the tomato field, kicked the earth a bit with his toe, stamped it with his foot, glanced at the sky, then went up the hill again to the shed, put the harness over his arm and went back down again. He harnessed the horse to the harrow. He had forgotten about his wife.
He always felt happier when he started working in the fields, than when he was finishing up.

Just now, the soil was easier, not too damp, not too dry. The horse turned by itself at the end of the field, the blades turned easily, newly oiled. Without thinking, Joe began his familiar whistling. Maybe already on the first weekend, when he would come home from work, the peas would need hoeing…